Scott Hirsch

Scott Hirsch

Scott Hirsch is a California-based American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, recordist and audio engineer. He is known for his long-term work as a collaborator, particularly with Hiss Golden Messenger, where he plays bass and helps shape the group’s sound. He also works with The Court & Spark, Golden Gunn, Boxharp and Ex-Ignota.

Hirsch records solo material under his own name. His solo album Blue Rider Songs draws on several connected periods in his working life, including a year of heavy touring with Hiss Golden Messenger in 2015, his move with his family from Brooklyn to Ojai, California, and the opening of his Echo Magic West studio in Ojai. The record also grows out of his work on the self-titled Golden Gunn album with M.C. Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger and Steve Gunn.

Blue Rider Songs includes contributions from Jade Hendrix on harmony vocals, Thomas Heyman on pedal steel, Phil Cook on organ and harmonica, and Matt Douglas on saxophones. Heyman is identified as an old bandmate from the San Francisco group The Court & Spark. Hirsch wrote much of the music for the Golden Gunn album and, hearing Taylor and Gunn add words and vocals to his instrumental tracks, moved into writing and recording under his own name. He also reworks Golden Gunn’s “The Sun Comes Up a Purple Diamond” on the album.

The title Blue Rider Songs refers to Der Blaue Reiter, the short-lived German modernist art movement of 1911 to 1914 associated with Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. The movement’s interest in colour theory and synaesthesia informs the reference, with blue linked in this context to spirituality, abstraction and the eternal.